Abstract
Purpose - The purposes of this study are to examine the relations among loneliness, Facebook enjoyment, and trip satisfaction and investigate the mediating effect of Facebook enjoyment between loneliness and trip satisfaction. Design, data, and methodology - The data were collected through an online survey company, targeting US residents who have a Facebook account. A total of 466 responses were included in the data analysis. The study has performed PLS-SEM and multi-group analysis to analyze the data. Result - The results indicated that loneliness had a negative effect on trip satisfaction and Facebook enjoyment, while Facebook enjoyment showed a positive relationship with trip satisfaction. In addition, Facebook enjoyment played a successful mediating role between loneliness and trip satisfaction. However, Facebook enjoyment had a negative mediating effect on the relationship between loneliness and trip satisfaction. Conclusions - The results revealed that loneliness had a negative effect on travel satisfaction and Facebook enjoyment, while Facebook enjoyment influenced travel satisfaction positively. Furthermore, as a mediator, Facebook enjoyment indicated a suppression effect, which means it mitigated the negative relation between loneliness and trip satisfaction.